Can’t Get Tenure? Then Get a Real Job The fundamental issue in the academic job market is not that administrators are cheap and greedy, or that adjuncts lack a union. It’s that there are many more people who want to be research professors than there are jobs for them. And since all those people have invested the better part of a decade in earning their job qualifications, they will hang around on the edges of academia rather than trying to start over. Such a gigantic glut of labor is bound to push down wages and working conditions. (Bloomberg via ACTA)

Mental Health Needs Seen Growing at Colleges The need to help this troubled population has forced campus mental health centers — whose staffs, on average, have not grown in proportion to student enrollment in 15 years — to take extraordinary measures to make do. Some have hospital-style triage units to rank the acuity of students who cross their thresholds. Others have waiting lists for treatment — sometimes weeks long — and limit the number of therapy sessions. (The New York Times)

How to Restore Sanity to Student Loans If our politicians are going to insist on being The First National Bank for Students, it’s time for them act like real lenders. For the sake of both taxpayers and would-be students, they need to examine the creditworthiness of all potential borrowers, and deny aid to those who are too risky. (SeeThruEdu via ACTA)

About the blogger

Alex Friedrich reports on higher education issues for MPR News. Among the stories he has covered: the fall of the Berlin Wall, aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, 2003 Moscow suicide bombing and 2004 presidential elections in the Republic of Georgia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia and a master’s in European political economy from the London School of Economics.